Download The Ontological Argument is a logical sleight of hand

“The Ontological Argument is a logical sleight of hand.”
The ontological argument for the existence of God is perhaps the only argument which makes
use of logic and a priori statements to support its reasoning. If the argument is successful, it
proves that God’s existence is logically necessary, and therefore, the existence of God is proven.
The first thing the ontological argument tries to do is to provide a definition for the word
‘God’. This is necessary in order to justify that the statement ‘God exists’ is true – in other
words, it is an analytic statement, which supporters of the argument accept to be true. St.
Anselm of Canterbury defined God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” and
maintained that this definition would be accepted by both believers and non-believers. He
states that God exists in the mind, but he must also exist in reality, because God is “that than
which nothing greater can be conceived”, and it is better to exist both in the mind and in reality.
Therefore, Lord, not only are you that than which nothing
greater can be conceived but you are also something greater
than can be conceived. Indeed, since it is possible to be
something of this kind, if you are not this very thing,
something can be conceived greater than you, which cannot
be done.
St. Anselm, Proslogian 2
And so, Anselm concludes that God must exist, and that his existence is necessary. However,
not everyone agrees with Anselm’s definition of God, and simply because the word ‘God’ is
referring to a being external to spatial and temporal limits, shouldn’t it be impossible to reflect
God’s nature in merely a few words? Maybe it is ludicrous even to attempt to define God, and
if we cannot define God, we cannot realistically discuss the issue of God’s possible existence.
René Descartes’ version of the ontological argument makes use of an analogy. Descartes uses
the analogy of the triangle to illustrate God’s necessary existence. He states that like a triangle
must have three sides, so God must exist. It is impossible to imagine a triangle with less or
more than three sides, and it is illogical to think of God without thinking that he exists.
However, an analogy compares two things, and they must have some sort of common ground in
order for the comparison to work. Many people would therefore argue that analogies in the
ontological argument are meaningless, because you cannot realistically compare God with
anything we can relate to, since he is beyond our understanding.
Gottlob Frege also made an objection to Anselm’s argument. He said that both Anselm and
Descartes try to pass off ‘existence’ as a first-order predicate – that is, something that tells us
the nature of the subject (God) – when existence should really be a second-order predicate –
something that tells a concept about the subject. If I used another example to illustrate this, it
would be similar to saying “the mountains are green” (‘green’ being the first predicate). This
tells us about the nature of the mountains - that they are green. But if I said afterwards, “the
mountains are numerous”, this is about a concept, not about the nature of mountains, and adds
nothing new to my knowledge and understanding of mountains. Therefore the word
‘numerous’ must be classed as a second-order predicate, as Frege says the word ‘existence’
should.
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Bertrand Russell was another philosopher who criticized the use of vocabulary in the
presenting of the ontological argument. Russell felt that everyday language was misleading,
and often insufficient to describe philosophical ideas. He developed the concept of
“philosophical logic” which uses words in the layout of a mathematical formula to present
ideas in a simple way. This philosophical logic is similar to a syllogism. Russell stated that
Anselm’s use of the word ‘existence’ is incorrect. He used this set of premises as an example:
Men exist.
Santa Claus is a man.
Therefore, Santa Claus exists.
Norman Malcolm’s version of the ontological argument states that if it is accepted that God’s
existence is logically necessary, it must also be accepted that God exists. Brian Davies
summarized Malcolm’s argument as “God is necessary; therefore God ‘is’”. He also said that
the word ‘is’ is very ambiguous, as it can have so many different meanings depending on the
sentence it is used in, so saying, “God’s existence is necessary” is simply not meaningful
enough to prove God’s existence. He used the example of pixies to illustrate this.
A pixie is a little man with pointed ears. Therefore there
actually exists a pixie.
Davies further suggested that if a pixie had to exist in order to have the pointy ears, people
would accept that without further disagreement.
Despite all the criticisms, the ontological argument does also have its strengths. The
arguments are logical, and if one accepts the premises, the argument is a success. Also, the
argument is made up of a priori statements, so once it is accepted; you don’t need evidence or
further proof to back it up. There are some ways in which the argument succeeds, even
though there have been refutes against it. For example, the analogy of the island was put
forward by Gaunilo of Marmoutier. This analogy was produced in response to the ideas in
Anselm’s Proslogian 2 and stated that if somewhere, there was to exist the perfect island,
Proslogian 2 is more or less saying that the perfect island must exist because it is perfect. Of
course, Gaunilo’s island is representative of God. However, this argument does not
successfully refute Anselm’s one, because Gaunilo is comparing two things that belong to the
same category (the perfect island, and other islands), while God is defined by Anselm as being
“that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, and so cannot belong to the same category
as anything else. Therefore, Gaunilo’s analogy does not undermine Anselm’s Proslogian 2.
In my opinion, I believe that the ontological argument is largely just a play on words, a logical
sleight of hand that makes use of too many ambiguous words and also words that cannot even
be properly defined. Although it does have its strengths, in that it is logical, and does not rely
on experience which can be unreliable, I think that there are too many valid criticisms that go
against this proof of God for it to be fully workable. Therefore, I believe the criticisms
outweigh the strengths of this argument, and it is not a particularly strong one in proving the
existence of God.
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